Farleigh left school at 14 and enlisted as an apprentice at the Artists' Illustrators Agency in London, applying himself to lettering, wax engravings and black and white drawings, intended for advertising. He also attended drawing classes at the
Bolt Court Technical School. In 1918 he was conscripted into the army and served until peace was declared in November of the same year. He resumed his apprenticeship and was awarded a government grant enabling him to enrol for three years at the
London County Council Central School of Arts and Crafts (later the
Central School of Art and Design). The teaching staff included
Bernard Meninsky and
Noel Rooke who trained him in wood-engraving. Between 1922 and 1925 Farleigh was an art master at
Rugby School, thereafter returning to London and assuming a post at the
Central School of Arts and Crafts, where he taught antique and still-life drawing and later, illustration. Here he tutored some extremely talented wood-engravers, including
Monica Poole. In 1940 Farleigh was appointed as chairman of the
Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society (now the
Society of Designer Craftsmen). In 1946 the Society, in cooperation with the
Red Rose Guild, the
Senefelder Club, the Society of Wood-Engravers and the Society of Scribes and Illuminators, formed the Crafts Centre of Great Britain (now Contemporary Applied Arts). Farleigh was chairman of the centre from 1950 until 1964. In 1941 the
British Council commissioned him to design the title page of the catalogue for the
Exhibition of Modern British Crafts. The writer and illustrator
Judith Kerr said that he was the person who taught her most when she was doing evening classes at
St Martin's School of Art during the war. Farleigh's work was widely exhibited -
Leicester Galleries,
Manchester City Art Gallery,
Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers,
Royal Scottish Academy and Cooling and Sons Gallery. His wood-engravings appeared in the 1925
Golden Cockerel Press edition of
Selected Essays by The Reverend Jonathan Swift and in the books published by the
Shakespeare Head Press in the late 1920s. He was elected an
Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in 1937 and a full member in 1948. His work was also part of the
painting event in the
art competition at the
1948 Summer Olympics. ==References==